A Family Secret

by Maureen Wood

  Again, I was accused of lying. Again, I wept tears of frustration and fury. But a little voice, just level with my shoulder, reined me back in.

  ‘You can do this, Mum,’ Christopher whispered. ‘Remember, I’ve done my part. I’m with you.’

  And I knew I was not alone. I wiped my eyes, blew my nose, and carried on. By the time my evidence was finished I felt like I’d been chewed up and spat back out. I had been on the stand, in total, for ten hours. I continued going to court every day even though I was not required to. It was totally compelling and held a morbid fascination for me. I didn’t want to be there, and yet I couldn’t not go. But as I got to the door of the courtroom on day four, and heard John Wood’s cold, measured voice, I froze. I couldn’t go in.

  That voice threw me right back to my childhood.

  ‘And don’t worry, I’ve had the snip.’

  ‘And if you tell anyone, I will kill you.’

  ‘So, you will be my wife this week.’

  I shuddered, trying to shake the memories out of my head. Instead, I went into the witness room to wait. There were only two witnesses for the defence: Him. And her. I was told that Mum had collapsed on the stand and claimed she could not breathe. The trial was halted, and an ambulance was called. But I had seen her outside earlier, smoking and staring ahead with her ‘pan face’. I knew the collapse was nothing but a show for the jury. She was all about keeping up pretences and always had been. And sure enough, she was back in the dock that same afternoon, having recovered rather quickly. Jock had to be at the court, too, as he was listed to be sentenced at the end of this trial, should they be found guilty. And on the sixth day Jock’s barrister asked Marie if I would be prepared to speak to him.

  ‘As long as I’m not on my own with him,’ I agreed.

  Truthfully, I wanted to face him. I wanted to know why he had denied being Christopher’s father for so long. We met in a small witness room, with police officers on either side.

  ‘Have you accepted you are Christopher’s father?’ I asked. ‘Finally?’

  ‘I have no choice,’ he replied.

  ‘But you knew, all those years ago,’ I insisted. ‘Otherwise, why did you ask if you could carry the coffin at his funeral? You asked because you knew you were his father.’

  Jock shook his head angrily.

  ‘I asked because I was the man of the house and it was my place to carry him,’ he said.

  I knew he was lying.

  ‘John Wood was man of the house,’ I countered.

  ‘No, he wasn’t,’ Jock replied, rattled. ‘I was.’

  He wouldn’t accept responsibility. Wouldn’t even look me in the eye. The silence stretched painfully between us.

  ‘Have you nothing else to say?’ I asked eventually.

  ‘Like what?’ he said.

  ‘Well, an apology, an admission of what you did?’ I said sadly.

  Jock glared.

  ‘I have nothing to apologise for,’ he spat. ‘I pleaded guilty. What more do you want?’

  I was angry myself now.

  ‘You should apologise to Christopher,’ I said. ‘He is your son and because of you he had to be exhumed, because you wouldn’t admit what you did.’

  But Jock still refused to say sorry. He said nothing at all.

  I threw my hands up and left the room. It was almost as though he felt he had done me a favour by pleading guilty. He acted almost as though I was making a fuss about nothing, as though I was over-dramatising the entire situation. I had no idea why he had asked to see me, because he had nothing to say. I had done all the talking. I had made all the effort. Once again, he was controlling me and pulling all the strings and I was mad at myself for even agreeing to see him. Jock had had a tough life. But so had I. And nothing could ever excuse the way he had behaved.

  Despite everything, I was glad I had agreed to see him. It did at least mean that I was left with no illusions. As we whiled away the long hours in the witness room, Marie and I chatted and I spoke to her about the involvement of social services in my childhood.

  ‘When I look back, I can’t believe that nobody at all noticed what I was going through,’ I told her. ‘I used to think that someone, somewhere, would rescue me. There were so many warning signs. Yet nothing ever happened.

  ‘It was all the more puzzling because we’d had social workers crawling over our family like ants so much of the time. It wasn’t even as if anyone needed to alert them, because they were already there. But they had never picked up on a thing.’

  One afternoon, I steeled myself and began reading through my social services file – and seeing one page, my blood ran cold. There was a short note, taken from Jock’s records, that someone had reported him for abusing one of his sisters. There was no name. But there it was, in black and white, that somebody knew. Given what happened to me, surely social services should have investigated?

  It seemed quite incredible. I’d had an unexplained pregnancy. I’d been to hospital with urine infections and a vaginal injury, apparently from sitting on a bike. I’d run away countless times. I was deeply unhappy and disturbed. And, for the final, devastating piece of the jigsaw, Jock was known to be abusing one of his siblings. It defied belief that nothing had been done.

  ‘It could all have been avoided,’ I said bitterly. ‘The whole thing.’

  It was a mini hand grenade into my life. But at that moment I was dealing with an atom bomb, with the trial going on around me. Whatever shock and outrage I felt over social services would have to wait. On the tenth day the jury went out to deliberate. I paced the corridors, unable to relax, unable to focus on anything else.

  ‘Let’s go outside,’ Naomi suggested. ‘Let’s have something to eat and try to settle your nerves.’

  She and I went outside, along with Ben, to sit on a bench in the spring sunshine. Naomi’s friend, Ash, had brought us a picnic, and we ate sausage rolls and drank lemonade, pretending to the world that it was just a normal day. That little splash of kindness from Ash meant so much; it was like an arm around the shoulder. As we sat and ate, Ben told me how, a couple of years earlier, John Wood had taken him aside over Christmas and said: ‘No matter what you hear, no matter what people say about me, I will always love you. You will always be my grandchildren.’

  ‘I thought nothing of it at the time,’ Ben told me. ‘He’d had a few glasses of red wine and I just thought he was drunk and rambling. Looking back, I think he saw this trial coming. He must have been worried you might go to the police one day and he was trying to explain himself. Not that he ever could.’

  I shivered. John Wood had lost the right to be a grandfather a long time ago. The jury came back first on John Wood, and as we filed into court I prepared myself for the inevitable disappointment.

  ‘Guilty on all charges,’ said the foreman.

  I felt my knees buckle as I gripped Ben and Naomi’s hands on either side of me.

  ‘We did it, angel,’ I whispered. ‘Me and you.’

  ‘Well done, Mum,’ Christopher said softly. ‘I knew you could do it.’

  There was no celebration, no time for it to sink in. The jury went back out to continue deliberating Mum’s guilt. John Wood was remanded into custody immediately. He asked rather pathetically if he could be allowed to go home overnight to pack up his things, but his request was refused. He’d had years to make his plans for going to jail, I thought to myself. Truth was, like Jock, he’d never expected me to take it this far. He didn’t think I had the bottle.

  The following day the foreman returned again, this time to say they could not reach a majority verdict on my mother. The split was 9–3 in my favour and so the jury was hung. A hush fell over the courtroom and I felt my heart drop. It was a blow, but in truth I was not surprised. It was asking a lot of a group of complete strangers to believe that a mother would do the unthinkable to her own child.
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br />   Mum’s face made my skin crawl; she was smiling broadly, smugly, as though she had just won first prize. As though she had just got one over on me. Outside court, I met with my legal team.

  ‘You’re the only witness,’ my barrister told me. ‘Can you face a retrial? Can you face the whole thing again?’

  He knew the stress had almost broken me and I think he was surprised by my instant answer. For me, there was no decision to make.

  ‘Absolutely,’ I said. ‘Even if this finishes me off completely, I will see it through.’

  I had to do it – I had come this far, and I had to see it through to the end. I felt she was the linchpin, the source of the evil. In my mind she was the catalyst for the abuse. She was my mother; she had been in a position to look after me. She could have taken me away from it all, she could have saved me. Instead, she joined in. There could be no worse betrayal, no more sickening treachery, than this.

  After lunch we went back into court and the retrial was announced. This time Mum did not look quite so pleased with herself. She’d expected me to crumble after the first verdict. But she was wrong. I was finding a courage and a conviction that my family had never seen before. Next time, I realised, it would be just me and her. The mother of all trials, against the mother of all evil. And whilst a part of me dreaded it, I also looked forward to it. This was my chance, my last chance, to set the record straight once and for all.

  That September, John Wood and Jock were sentenced. In the morning, Louise collected me and drove me to court. Jock was in the foyer and we had no choice this time but to stand with him. It felt like a failing of the British justice system: abuser and abused, standing side by side.

  ‘Make sure Mum gets what she deserves,’ he said to me.

  I didn’t reply. John Wood, 68, was convicted of seven counts of rape and sentenced to sixteen years in prison. John Donnelly, 46, aka Jock Donnelly, received two years in jail after admitting rape, incest and indecent assault.

  Again, my emotions were churning and contrary. I thought they should have got longer. Yet I also thought they’d got too long. Whilst I hated them for what they had done, I felt paralysed by the glaring fact that I had put my own brother and stepfather behind bars.

  One month on, the day after my forty-first birthday, the retrial began. This time I had been counting down to the date. I wanted it to happen. But that first morning I had a panic attack. I felt like I was walking into a boxing ring, to fight my own mother. Me v Her. The only other witness was Marie, the police officer. Outside court, as I blew into a paper bag, people around me gave what they thought was well-meaning advice.

  ‘She’s a witch, she deserves it, you just need to be strong.’

  ‘She’s the last one, this is the last chapter. You’ve come this far, you can finish it now.’

  But for me it was not so simple. This was my mother. The woman had carried me and given birth to me. Yes, she had abused me. Yes, she had betrayed me. But she had also cooked my meals, washed my clothes, put plasters on my grazed knees. She had called the radio when I was small, with a birthday dedication. She had helped me decorate my first home. She had been a grandmother, of sorts, to my children. Could I really condemn her? I was on the last mile of the marathon and yet I was ready to give up and limp home.

  ‘I can’t do it,’ I said eventually. ‘I’m sorry.’

  My barrister asked the judge to give me one day’s grace, to go home and make a decision, and he agreed. The next day, the trial would either go ahead or it would be abandoned for good. I had twenty-four hours to pull myself together. But I didn’t think for a moment I’d be going back there. I felt as though I had been kidding myself, building myself up to a big ‘one on one’ battle with my mother, as though it was some sort of public straightener. An extravaganza of justice. Deep down, I was still a frightened little girl. I could not fight her. I would rather have faced anyone but her. She had given me life, and I felt sure, in that moment, that she would be the one to end it too.

  Mick had the younger children for the day, so the house was quiet. I lay in my bed and sobbed and sobbed. I knew that if the trial went ahead Mum’s barrister would rip me to pieces again. Second time around it seemed even worse, because I knew what to expect. I knew how destructive it would be. I wasn’t sure I could weather this storm. That night, as I lay in bed, tormented and confused, I heard Christopher’s voice in my head, as clear as if he was perching on the edge of my duvet.

  ‘You can do it,’ he said. ‘Course you can. You’ve been through worse than this. Much worse. And this time you have six children who believe in you.

  ‘Six reasons to feel loved. Six reasons to feel proud.

  ‘You’re not on your own in that courtroom. I am with you, always.’

  His words brought me a sense of peace and I slept soundly, knowing that my boy had my back. The following morning I was outside the courtroom, bright and early. My barrister was delighted.

  ‘I wasn’t sure you would come back today,’ he smiled.

  ‘Neither was I,’ I grinned. ‘Let’s just say I had a pep talk.’

  As I took the stand I prepared myself for the onslaught. It was every bit as bruising as I had feared. Mum’s barrister kept on referring to ‘the sex with your brother’.

  I bristled.

  ‘Please don’t say that,’ I retorted. ‘I did not have sex with him. I was a child. I was raped.’

  The judge agreed with me.

  ‘Please don’t use that term again,’ he instructed.

  It was a scrap of comfort and it gave me a little bit of confidence.

  ‘Would you not agree that you’re unstable?’ the barrister pressed. ‘And that you fabricated the entire story?’

  I knew he was trying to discredit me. It was my word against hers. That was all it came down to. For her part, Mum fell ill again when she was being cross-examined. She asked for an ambulance, but this time the judge called a doctor into court and he could find nothing obvious wrong with her. The trial continued and I allowed myself another small smile of satisfaction.

  ‘See?’ Christopher whispered. ‘Things are going our way, Mum. Things are moving in our favour.’

  The jury went out, and I had the feeling, familiar by now, of time being on hold. I felt as though I was suspended in space. It was 4.30 p.m. the following day when the jury came back. I stayed in the witness room. I didn’t expect a guilty verdict, I didn’t dare hope that it might go my way. But I didn’t regret it either. I could at least tell myself, and my children, that I had tried. I pushed all the way for justice and I had done everything I could to expose the truth. I had given it my all. But then, to my amazement, there was a bang on the door of the witness room and a voice shouted: ‘Guilty!’

  Outside, there was celebrating. The legal team were whooping and punching the air. And rightly so, for they had done a great job. For me, there was nothing like that. I felt, if anything, deflated. I felt no glee, no sense of victory. Mum was sentenced there and then. Aged 65, she was found guilty of four counts of aiding and abetting the rape of a girl under sixteen. She was jailed for nine years. I was told she had kept her ‘pan face’ even throughout the verdicts. I would never know whether she had any genuine regret or remorse. That day I handed back the shame, the disgust, the guilt and the pain. I dumped the lot on her. I was done with it. I had waited over thirty years for justice, thirty years to put my own family in prison. There were no winners. But now, at last, I could move on with my head held high.

  When I got home, the kids crowded around with hugs and congratulations.

  ‘Well done, Mum,’ they said. ‘You didn’t give up.’

  And a soft voice in my ear added: ‘I knew you wouldn’t. I had faith in you all the way, Mum.’

  Deep down, I was satisfied, though I didn’t want to celebrate or make a big deal out of the verdicts. But that same week, SAIVE, the organisation that had provi
ded my counselling, asked me to speak to the local paper.

  ‘You’re one of our success stories,’ Louise explained. ‘We hope we can persuade other people to come forward and get help.’

  I agreed immediately. Louise had done so much for me, and if I could help in return I was more than happy to do so. I had no reservations at all about being identified publicly. I had kept silent for so many years that now I wanted the world to know my story. I had a message to share, too. I wanted people to understand that women could also be abusers. That abuse came from all corners of society. And that hiding it and burying it was never the right thing to do. Mothers could be monsters, too. It was not a fashionable message, or a particularly pleasant one. It was hard to swallow. But it was pivotal that I spoke out.

  When the paper came out, in January 2012, I was on the front page, with my photo, and I felt liberated. Local people were supportive. My friends were brilliant. One day I went into a bookshop and the assistant said: ‘Well done. I saw you in the paper. You should write a book!’

  ‘Maybe I will,’ I replied. ‘One step at a time.’

  The only retaliation came, sadly, from my own wider family, from relatives of my mother. They were horrified at what they saw as me dragging the family name through the mud.

  ‘This could have been sorted out, in the family, without the police,’ said one.

  ‘You should have let sleeping dogs lie,’ said another.

  I wasn’t surprised. I was used to this sort of warped reaction from my relatives. But it was a bit disappointing, all the same. And a small piece of me was still afraid of them. A part of me still craved their acceptance and affection, even though I knew it would never come. Jock’s house came under attack from vandals, with ‘Paedo’ daubed in paint across his walls. But I heard that his family were sticking by him. Despite everything.

  I joined Survivor groups on Facebook. I met people who were at breaking point from abuse, as I once had been. It was good to feel that I could help a little, that something positive could come from my own personal horror. I went to rallies, too – against sexual abuse and exploitation. And this new me felt good. This was better, so much better, than hiding everything away. My children recognised a huge change in me.